Every Impossible Thing
by Lunamaria
Summary: Post-series AU. Six years after the Hundred Year War, the world has their eye on who the last airbender will marry. Aanji, Zutara, etc.
1. Yesteryears

_Every Impossible Thing_

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 _ **Author's note** : _Okay. So you may (or may not) recognize this story as _Primary Days_ , a fanfiction I began eight years ago on a shared account, Sumioney. Eventually my co-authors and I stopped updating, and the rest is basically history. Since then, however, the plot bunny for this story has never really left me alone. The original story has undergone a couple of re-writes, but I finally made the decision to move it to my primary account here. I'm also re-writing everything from the ground up, as a lot of the details of the story have changed for me.

You can go back and read the first five chapters, but the writing isn't great and a lot of it is changing. And unlike the original, I imagine the chapters for this story are going to be on the shorter side, sort of like a series of oneshots rather than a comprehensive fic. It will probably vary.

Also, a note about the setting: this is considered post-series AU, and disregards all comics and LoK.

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1\. Yesteryears

Life had not changed much on the outside.

School was punctually attended, rules still strictly enforced, and Hide-and-Explode still a favorite of the children.

If anything had changed, it was On Ji herself. She was no longer the twelve-year-old girl who had quietly submitted to every tradition, nor was she so firmly planted in her roots. One happenstance meeting, and the shifting of her nation, set a course so changed from what she had known.

The years following had rolled by like dust, smoky and quick. They had flown by as fast as Kuzon had come and gone, before she could even blink.

The Fire Nation had changed in ways, and stubbornly held onto its identity in others; for both the better and the worse, On Ji believed. Like so many others, On Ji's relationship with her country was a complicated one. She was relieved not to see her homeland razed in the name of reparation, but it was bittersweet still to see the sordid history between four nations draw to an uneasy close.

Into a new era, On Ji's world crept. But even before the theaters of a century-long war has closed, On Ji had taken her own steps into the unknown. It was the difference one person, the difference one day could make. It still awed her, six years after the fact. Some days it made her feel as if she could accomplish anything.

Most days, she thought of him and what he had done for her. Especially today, at the mouth of the cave where she had re-learned – or first learned – what it meant to be alive. Truly, wholly present.

Even to herself, it sounded like one of the Ember Island Players's overbearing, romanticized dramas. Boy, girl, a dance, a spark of interest. In the end, they are tragically separated by years and distance and mystery. Fill each scene in with enough pining and exaggerated histrionics, and a playact is born.

What the play would never convey, however, was what On Ji felt more than anything: a pure thankfulness. Whatever secondary things she had let her mind wander over paled in comparison to the depth of her gratefulness to Kuzon.

To him, it might have only been a night of dancing. To the others, and to her, it had meant more.

On Ji stepped into the cave. It stretched wide to each side and out some distance before her. The platforms, mysteriously convenient, occupied a generous portion of the center of the cave. On Ji skirted the dais where the musicians would have played if this were a night of cave dancing, and then drifted along the very right side of the cavern. She ran a hand along the wall, bumping her fingers along each jagged edge in rhythm to the song building in her mind.

Then, piece by piece, her movements formed. It was arms against ribs, all curved lines, and knees bent and nimble. With a sharp intake of breath, she outstretched both legs, turning into a pirouette it had taken weeks to master. Her feet went flat, and her body did want it knew to do for Kuzon's Phoenix Flight. Each move, cultivated over the years, came naturally to her. It no longer required thought. She was no bender, but she felt as if she moved with the same purpose as one.

It was not fire she bent with her movements. It was arms and legs and hands and feet. It was On Ji, energy coursing from one limb to the next until her lungs burned.

On Ji slowed her steps to allow the stitch in her side a moment's relief, humming beneath her breath. And when she felt ready, she would try it. It was sure to be no more successful than her last attempt and the attempt before that, but On Ji was determined.

The Chamelephant Strut.

It was the move Kuzon used that most intrigued, and most eluded, On Ji. She had been able to piece together so many of his other dances and forms, but some sequence to his Chamelephant Strut always failed her. It was in the feet, but she never could figure out how to correct herself.

Always she tried.

Placing her hands palm down, On Ji jumped high, striking each uncurled hand left and right. When her first foot touched ground, she knew at once her angle was miscalculated. The move required quickness, balance, and precision. On Ji usually had two of the three, but never in the same combination. Always her feet betrayed her. It was a frustration to feel her left foot slide against the cave floor until her entire body gave way beneath.

After the dust around her settled and she moved each limb to check for pain, On Ji rolled over onto her back, eyes closed.

She said, "Definitely next time."

A moment passed.

"You just messed up the sequence of your feet a little," said a voice breezily from the entrance of the cave.

Jerking her eyes open, On Ji scrambled to her feet.

"I-" she began mid-rise, grasping for words.

On Ji froze the moment she was on her feet, every part of her sharply focused on the source of the voice.

She could not quite believe what she saw.

Leaving the bright cast of the afternoon and entering into the cooler shadow of the cave, was a boy as unmistakable as could be. Wrapped in the orange and yellow robes of the Air Nomads and bearing the blue arrows of an acknowledged airbender stood the Avatar. Even if she had not seen the scrolls of his likeness, there was no mistaking who he was. He was the last of his kind.

"Instead of keeping your left foot stiff and angled, keep on your toes. Try to anticipate your landing as little as possible. Your body knows what to do."

On Ji stood still and straight, trying to reconcile his voice, inexplicably familiar, with his words and his presence. Something about toes. The Avatar, in a cave, in _her_ cave, talking about toes.

What.

He waited patiently for her to process his words. When her body lost some of its startled tension, he floated over to her like a breeze, his grin stretched wide.

"Trust yourself," he said, "and be light on your toes. Like air."

Like air. On Ji snorted, even as she struggled to bring some sense of awareness back to herself. On Ji felt slanted and boneless, a little to do with her fall and a lot to do with the Avatar hovering over her.

When he finished his instruction, he showed her the connected movements to the elusive Chamelephant Strut. In three, four, five movements he had completed the dance and returned to her expectantly.

"You try it," he said, gesturing widely to the cave.

"Oh," On Ji said.

In a remote cave near her childhood home, On Ji danced in front of the Avatar of her generation. She moved slowly on her first attempt, skidding on her landing as she had before. She did not quite fall, but it was a near thing.

"Again," he said, and On Ji obliged.

Six more times she obliged, as each time he pointed out where her form had failed. He had a good eye, and each attempt On Ji came closer to completing the move with his instruction. It was on the seventh try that On Ji's foot landed true, one strut to the next, until she had successfully completed her first Chamelephant Strut.

"I did it," On Ji said in wonder.

"You did!" the Avatar echoed, pleased.

As her amazement faded, the realization returned. She was with the Avatar. Alone. In a cave.

"What are you–?"

"Let's call it for old time's sake, shall we?"

On Ji appraised the Avatar again, his robes, tattoos, unconcerned brown eyes, and wondered how her cave and this moment had any thread of commonality with the greatest bender of their time. Perhaps it was a simple as dance. Dance was something On Ji knew to be unifying, and perhaps today it was a simple chance of fate. Her, the Avatar, the cave.

Old time's sake.

On Ji nodded, bemused. "Dance-" she began.

"Is an expression of one's self that no one can ever take away from you," the Avatar interrupted, and something in On Ji's mind clicked together as he did. He said each word as if he had plucked it from her mind.

It was more than the words. It was the voice, and when she peered closer, it was also the face. Then it was everything, coming sharply into focus all at once.

"Kuzon?"

The Avatar grinned and leapt into a gust of bending and out from the cave, leaving his answer in the air.


	2. Decisions

_Every Impossible Thing_

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 ** _Author's Note_** : I'm sorry the second chapter of this took so long to post. It took me a while to figure out which direction I wanted to take this story in…I'm still not really sure, but I'll still settle for the victory of chapter two.

Like I mentioned in the first chapter, these chapters are going to be considerably shorter than they used to be. The order of the story is also changing form the first version of this fic, because of reasons.

As usual, this is considered post-series AU and disregards all comics and LoK. I'm too lazy to make it all work together /shrugs

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2\. Decisions

 **Aang** would never forget the moment that changed everything.

That moment that changed not only the course of his life, but of the entire world. The moment he lost himself to the storm and vanished from the world for a generation.

Like magic, frozen in ice.

He did not like to dwell on the memory, coated with so much regret, but he had grown to understand the nature of it.

He had been a child, so much younger than Avatars of past when his birthright was revealed. Gyatso had known the dangers in revealing it prematurely, had argued against it.

He had been right, of course, but it changed nothing in the end.

Not when he was a child with fate of the world atop his shoulders. And not just any world; a world so fractured and wrought with tension, it would go on for a hundred years. A hundred years of war, destruction…the loss of an entire people. _His_ people.

When old ghosts came calling, it helped to remember the circumstances.

He would never forgive his panic and what it had meant for his people and for the world…but he could understand it. Could understand the fear and expectations that had driven the moment, shaped and sculpted it into the terrible thing it had become.

Aang stared blankly back at the assemblage of ambassadors, emissaries, council members and miscellaneous agents of foreign states arranged in neat rows before the Avatar and the Fire Lord.

Blinking, he focused on the red and brown of Zuko's members and beyond to the green and blue of the representatives of the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes, Northern and Southern.

Word by word, the sentence pieced together in his mind. Aang carefully combed over each word, as if he had heard incorrectly. It sounded suspiciously like, _"The Avatar must be married before the year is out."_

"Excuse me?" Aang said, straightening his spine.

Acutely aware of every gaze in the room on him, he looked sideways to Zuko. Zuko pointedly ignored him.

"Could you please repeat that?" Aang asked, courteous and ever so mildly panicked.

There was a beat before a member of the Northern party from the Tribes drew herself up and said, "The Avatar must marry before the year is out."

Aang's ears did not deceive him. The outrage on Zuko's face was confirmation enough.

"Sika, what you're _insinuating_ –" Zuko began uncomfortably, folding his hands into his sleeves like his uncle would.

Zuko was becoming the portrait of Iroh, as both a young man and a ruler. Patient and forgiving of his nation, Zuko sought to guide his homeland as his uncle had guided him. With understanding and love, with firmness and with honor.

Aang noted the tension in the movement. His posture was the practiced and formal bearing of a nobleman, so unlike Aang's gangly, boneless mien.

"–is perfectly feasible," interrupted a slim, severe man in green robes, rising from his position a row away from Sika.

Comments and declarations of assent sprung up from every party gathered, so united a response Aang understood at once this demand had not been an impulse.

It was a crafted, calculated entreaty, of no surprise to anyone but himself.

Zuko would not look at him, but balked at Sika, his face so uncharacteristically indignant. To Aang, it was a safe bet this was not the first the Fire Lord had heard of it.

"Roku was never interrogated this way," Zuko said tersely, removing a hand from his sleeves to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Not even by those mother hens the Fire Sages."

Aang knew from experience Zuko was not accustomed to being cornered so baldly, but was tolerant of such impertinence from his foreign guests…particularly those of the Tribes.

"My Lord, please do not be insufferable. Roku was not the last firebender," intoned Sika gravely, unimpressed with the Fire Lord's opposition.

Zuko drew in a deep breath, one Aang recognized from Zuko's training. A deep breath to calm and center a firebender, whose emotion could never be unchecked. Fire was an element rooted deeply in emotion but honed with control.

"It is not, and has never been, anyone but the Avatar's business who he does or does not marry. If he marries _at all_."

A scoff came from the same man who had stood in support of Sika and of the room majority. Yeon, Aang remembered. His name was Yeon. "Of course he must. And have children besides. As many and as soon as possible."

He would have been sick all over Zuko's fine carpets if he'd eaten anything that morning. But he hadn't and was grateful to be saved the trouble and embarrassment.

 _As many and as soon as possible._

Children. It was _his_ life and _his_ children – non-existent and, in truth, debatable – being hawked like some ware on a street corner.

Aang tried to focus on the discussion as it continued on heatedly, but could only pick out pieces of it as Zuko and his assembled officials squabbled over the minutiae of the subject.

In fragments he heard: "A lady from the Earth Kingdom _would not_ do. How could we possibly expect airbenders from such a match? Between such opposing elements?"

He would learn later this point was a sore subject for the Earth Kingdom, but of such accepted rationale they did not push the matter.

Water, it was suggested, would be a more complimentary avenue.

At the mention of water, Aang was plucked from his distraction, suddenly too-aware of all people in the room, of all the eyes. Especially Zuko's.

His eyes cut to Aang's quickly, yellow pools widened in surprise.

He opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again after a moment.

Both the Avatar and Fire Lord looked away from each other as Yeon conceded: "Perhaps." He waved towards those gathered on behalf of the Tribes. "But can they afford the daughter? Sika, Imnek? Sedna?"

"It is not...advisable. Our daughters are precious to us," said Imnek, a man close in age to Hakoda, dark hair drawn back and laced with beads.

Aang recognized the ghost of pain in their eyes, the sadness that lingered for their lost princess, Yue.

 _Our daughters are precious to us._

"We have so few left," continued Imnek, a sharp, purposeful look to Zuko. "You are already prepared to take another from our sister Tribe in the South. I do not think we can give another, even to our friend the Avatar."

An awkward silence lingered, especially heavy between the Avatar and the Fire Lord.

Zuko coughed delicately. "Be that as it may, Avatar Aang's…personal affairs are not the fodder for ambassador's and councils."

"The Avatar's personal affairs, as you call them, are of foremost importance to us all," said Yeon, a sentiment Aang observed was shared by all present company. "I find myself asking why they are not as important to the both of you. As champions of restoration, I would think the rebuilding of the Nomads a priority."

"You _cannot_ know," said Zuko, a note of panic tightly coiled through his voice. "You cannot know if there will be airbenders."

The word and Zuko's panic sat oddly with Aang. _Airbenders_.

Beneath the upheaving of his personal affairs and continued awkwardness with Zuko, there was something beginning to nudge at Aang.

Something clicking into place, strange and peculiar.

One of Zuko's men, who has been curiously quiet on the whole, said patiently to his Fire Lord, "Would you prefer we send him off to a noble lady of every nation to sire a nation's worth of children? In the hopes of airbenders? Broker him out, my Lord, like a prized pony?"

It was Hata, and Aang could see the genuine concern in him, in so many of them, as the questions and protestations continued on about how to restore the Nomads and, as consequence, a key piece of balance.

This was not the insipid thirst of Zuko's courtiers, the scheming of the Fire Nation's, Earth Kingdom's and Water Tribe's, noble born.

"It must be thought of," was said as the meeting was drawing to its close, the Fire Lord on his last dregs of patience and at the behest of other engagements.

Aang recognized the speaker as Sedna, one of the few delegates able to sojourn from the Southern Water Tribes to the balmy capitol of the Fire Nation. She worked closely with Katara, for there was so little representation for their people in post-war mediations. The Southern Tribe could not spare so many of its people.

"We cannot force this course upon the Avatar, our ally and emancipator. But we beg of him to consider what he is – the world's last chance for airbenders. And regardless of where your allegiance fell in the war, Fire Lord, your dynasty is responsible for the loss of the Nomads. Your forefathers brought this upon us."

Zuko, Fire Lord and master bender, hero and friend, bowed his head to the room. An acknowledgment of the destructive legacy he had been handed.

"We have every hope you will continue to right their wrongs." Here, Sedna paused, expression and words imploring both Fire Lord and Avatar.

"Start with the airbenders."

There was a quiet steel in her eyes that suddenly reminded Aang of Yangchen, and her offered wisdom:

 _Selfless duty calls for you to sacrifice your own spiritual needs, and do whatever it takes to protect the world._

He'd been selfish once, and afraid; it had cost the world so dearly. It was a price paid in the lives of airbenders and waterbenders, one people gone and another so weakened in numbers.

Airbenders.

How could he refuse? To bring the Air Temples to life again? To brush the dust from the Nomad's libraries and monuments of worship and enlightenment? To rebuild and pass on the culture of his people?

In the end, the answer was simple. So simple.

He couldn't.

So he said, "We will consider it."

" _Aang_ ," Zuko warned, slamming a hand down like a gavel onto his pulpit. So much guilt built into the gesture.

Aang and Zuko both understood guilt and the responsibility that came with it.

Aang knew was sure this was not one of the troubles Zuko expected to face when re-modeling his empire, but like guilt and responsibility, they understood choices and decisions. Mistakes and atonement. Rebuilding, renewal.

"Give us time to consider it," the Avatar repeated, firmly and loudly enough that it echoed against the walls of the circular antechamber and back to him.

Not a promise, but good enough.

"Very well, Avatar."


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